What Is Love?

Chapter Twenty-Six

Danny Dare

Smell was the first sense that came back to me, and with it came the rusty aroma of blood. Next was taste... This too was accompanied but the iron bitterness of blood. I worked my jaw slowly trying to gain back feeling and spat the acrid taste from my mouth. With a great deal of effort I opened my eyes and found myself to be laying on a dusty concrete floor, in what from my vantage point appeared to be an old warehouse. Over the sent of my own blood I could smell the dirty saltiness of the channel and guessed that I must be in one of the hundred warehouses by the marina.

I coughed, my face still pressed against the dirty floor, and struggled to sit up. A boot planted firmly in the square of my back and pressed me against the ground as soon as I moved, however.

"So you're finally awake, are ya?  You were out so long, I was begging to worry about you, sweetheart."

I knew that voice... I'd only heard it once, but it was so striking, I remembered it.

"Evan?" I coughed, struggling against the pressure holding me down.

The boot lifted off of me and the fedora wearing bastard jumped into my view and sat Indian style in front of me. That same goofy grin as he'd worn in the store parking lot was still plastered on his face. "Close! Actually that's not my real name. Well, it is the name of the boy who's body I possessed - but he only shows up when I allow him to."

"What the hell..." I managed to wheeze before coughing again.

"Take it easy now girl," he said, grabbing my shoulders and helping me into a sitting position. It was then that I realized my hands had been tied behind my back. "Don't need to you choking to death now. I've got something much better planned for you."

My eyes widened. "What are you going to do to me?" I whispered in terror.

Evan - or whoever the hell he was - pulled a large hunting knife from his back pocket and started polishing the blade with his sleeve. "We're gonna have some fun," he replied maliciously.

I started trying to scoot backwards away from him. He was a psycho - I needed to get help, and fast. But before I'd moved more than and inch he brought the knife straight down through the top of my foot and pinned it to the floor. I screamed.

"Allow me to be cliche for a moment, but scream all you want! No one will hear you!" the mad man laughed, "But if you don't cooperate, I'm only going to have to get even more creative."

Tears were streaming down my face from pain and fear. "Why are you doing this? What do you want with me?" I sobbed.

Evan jerked the knife out of my foot and I screamed again as the hooked end of the blade grabbed at and tore more flesh on its way back out. "Well, unfortunately for you, you're just a pawn. You were in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and because you made friends with the wrong person... I'm gonna have to kill ya." He smiled happily as he said this, and if I wasn't already loosing a fair amount of blood, I'm sure my face would have paled even more than it already was. "You wanna know how I'm going to kill you? Ask me! Ask me, 'how are you going to kill me, Habit?'"

"Habit?" I choked out, "That's who you are?"

Habit got a frustrated look and sighed, exasperated. "No, I'm the fucking muffin man. Of course I'm the goddamn Habit! Why else would I refer to myself as such, hm?" he growled. A strange and frightening ambience became evident in his voice, and he truly did for a moment sound like a demon.

"You... You work for the Slender man," I stuttered.

Habit shrugged his shoulders. "If you wanna call it that. Sure, I work for him sometimes. The stick-in-the-mud can give me opportunities and fun little play dates I don't get on my own. People are always more fun to torture once they've lost everything they know and love - and that's his fucking specialty! He fucks up their lives, and I-" he puffed out his chest and squared his jaw in a 'heroic' pose, "- take them out of their misery."

"You fucking sadist psycho," I spat. "Fuck you, don't pretend you're some hero for killing innocent people."

The demon laughed at this. "If I had a nickel for every time someone told me, 'fuck you'... why, I'd be living in a palace!" He chuckled and shook his head, his long hair falling in his face. Habit adjusted his fedora and stood up.

"Sure you don't wanna know how I'm going to kill you? All you have to do is ask," he winked and strode off to somewhere behind me. I struggled to turn around and keep an eye on him, but between my injured foot and tied hands, my mobility was a bit impaired.

I opened and closed my mouth a few times, trying to force the words out. "How are you going to kill me, Habit?" I whispered.

Hands grabbed me and pulled me around so I faced the opposite wall. On the side of the warehouse wall, someone had painted a giant target in purple spray paint. "Do you like to play darts, Danny?" he cackled in my ear.

___________________________
A/N: Jeez, I enjoy writing Habit way too much. What oh what could our favorite demon be planing to do with Danny? We shall see!

-Erin